& if i ever do learn a word of dutch as in really learn it learn its body then the only word i want to know is kus this beautiful word for a kiss or is it to kiss as in the verb to be to be a stranger in the mouth of another language another way of breathing after all isn't that just another way of writing language the way the mind breathes air & creates tangible concepts like to be as in i am or we are they're not & then to move on to know plurals as in kussen the verb couple to be a pair of kisses against my lips as in the curve of this chocolate egg to know space between two kisses & to understand the possibility of breathing meaning into chocolate chickens or word lovers in dutch after all there are several points at which our languages rest against each other like two tired bicyclists kissing forever in a quiet lane & to know the space of this space the physical meaning of a word not meant to live in a dictionary but in the mouth to move through dutch like stars through unexplored space after all isn't language like a shiny spaceship forever tumbling toward the kus the kussen the be the to be bright & exploding stars our lives full of curved static words we wish to move between like stations on space lines our destination kussen & if i ever learn the word for kus in my own half language in which i could have been born to be to not be heard to speak without hearing the smack of that kus against the porthole spaces to hear it coming or departing perhaps upon arrival i will breathe that air called dutch & know its velocity its private kus in between kussen as soft shadows born of lips parse what is felt into being to be i am to kiss to be alive
Space Kus
This poem was the winner of the 2006 June Shenfield Poetry Award, open to all higher education students at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, and set up in memory of former Swinburne student June Shenfield.
Mooi!
This one is fuckin gorgeous, Davey. I’ll have that article for ya by May 1. Cheers, & then some….
nice work cracker, nice work.